By the time they leave the bar, Nick is still drunk. It's been illegal to smoke inside for years, but the dive bar they were in is a relic of other times, and somehow his clothes smell faintly of old cigarettes (it may also have been from the time he spent in proximity to Andrés.)
He had come close to dozing off in her lap when they had all been there together in the bar. It's a shame, really: he has been talking about wanting to talk shop with Kiara for some time. He has missed his chance.
When they wander out of the bar he is bleary eyed and regretting every last tequila shot. It is dark, has been dark for some time. He is leaning against Pen, though this is more out of a desire for closeness than any particular need for support. He isn't that drunk. So: they need to make their way across the parking lot, down the street where Nick parked the car. Pen of course will be driving them home.
Mercury
"We need to make a stop," Pen tells Nicholas. She drank the rest of his beer, and they all chatted amicably, those three Disciples of (very) different world views and paradigms, and the world did not end, and Andrés and Kiara were close to one another, and Nicholas lolled in Pen's lap, and perhaps Pen had designs on tempting Nick into a bathroom or the cellar store-room to fuck around depending on just how given over to drunk he is and whatever happened is written somewhere in a book the Norns read (or do they weave? Some Triple-bard) called the resplendent book of hallowed and ardent and daring and steadfast (and augurual and cold and rejuvenating and pulsing - it is a very long name; it is a name so long it goes on for longer than can be read). And it is dark, by the time they leave. It gets darker sooner these nights.
In the car, "And I may need you to rouse yourself and lend me a measure of your strength."
They stop outside a pawn shop of disreputable mien, the windows smoked with darkness and the look of it decidedly closed. Pen pounds on the door until someone opens up, a cranky looking man with a shock of hair and a tiny pair of spectacles. Nicholas is pressganged into helping carry Pen's treasure from the shop into the car: a hammered dulcimer, to go with whatever is in the black instrument case (a lap harp).
Nick
It was easy to tempt Nick into a bathroom or the store room: he is precisely the right mix of drunk, it would appear, for such escapades. As they approach the car his eyes slide to her sidelong when she tells him they need to make a stop, and to that he only nods, and as they enter the car he says, "All right. I think I can muster some," and there is a little smile here for her.
Then here, they are at a shady looking pawn shop, perhaps with neon lights on the windows which are dark just now, perhaps locked and barred with iron. He smiles at the cranky looking man. He helps Pen carry the hammered dulcimer and the black case to their car without complaint, though there is a little sweat that springs up on his brow: the instruments are heavy.
"Planning to learn to play?" he asks her, when they stop halfway to the car to set it down and catch their breath.
Mercury
"You are, aren't you?" Pen says, with a solemn and side-long glance, only the way her lashes have lowered, only their shadow on her cheekbones and the tarnished gray of her gray eyes beneath an indication that she is trying to pull one over on Nicholas. Unfortunately, or fortunately, she becomes more mischievous when Nicholas has had some to drink, and though there is no malice she does wonder if Nick might remember suddenly a thing that never happened. "Look at them closely, or wait until we're home, and I will show you what I mean to do with them."
Nick
"I'll look when we're home," he says, and his eyes blink-blink at her and the shadow her lashes cast over her cheekbones. His eyes are hazy; he is not thinking just now as he looks at her of whatever she plans to do with the instruments. "Ready?"
And, heave. They can get to the car, after a few minutes, though they have to pause and rest and also circle around to lower the seats before they can fit the dulcimer and the case into the little Civic.
Mercury
And Pen pets the dulcimer and the case and pillows them both with blankets left over from picnicing and she swipes her hand down Nick's side and flank and hooks a finger through his belt loop to tug him and says, "Thank you, Crow," and then it is into the driver's seat, the skirt of her gauzy rose-pink gown whisking out with Austen delicacy around the fitted autumn boots, and then the door slams shut, and once Nick is in and they're driving again Pen says kindly, "You can control the radio, love," and thus he is distracted hopefully when she begins to drive with her reckless sense of abandon and a liberatarian's respect of the laws.
Nick
Reckless abandon might have been dangerous were he any more drunk than he is; she might risk making him carsick. As it is, he fiddles a few times with the radio, switching through channels, lingering on the classic rock station and then dissatisfied switching to R&B only to switch back to the indie station. His head flops to the side across the center console and toward her: he is leaning, boneless, longing again for her lap though that is a terrible idea since she is driving. "Andrés seems really happy with Kiara," he says.
Mercury
"Do you think so? He does seem a tad freer, less constrained by a shadow," Pen says, and if Nick does lean too far, she will push him so he lists in the other direction. Sir, she is driving, and driving is serious business. "Differently salt-rimed."
Nick
"I think the shadow is still there, the shape is just changing," Nick says. "But he seems more comfortable. It's good to see him happy." He lists a little too far and she has to give him a push, and he sways now in the opposite direction; the noise that escapes him can best be described as a giggle, and while that is typically a word our narrator loathes sometimes it is indeed the most appropriate.
He leans his head against the window. "Are you going to start a band all by yourself? I want to listen to you play all the instruments."
Mercury
"I cannot play any instruments, so listening to me play all the instruments would be an exercise in fantasy," Pen tells Nick, though Nick giggling causes her to flash a glance his way; it is light, bending from a sword lake-wet and gleaming; it is pale radiance, and sharp, and amused.
Drive, drive, drive, pay attention to the road, drive drive speed oh shit a red light VROOM no police around good. The dulcimer is slightly jostled and Pen casts a quick contrite glance backward.
"It is good to see people happy. Especially when they are happy because of somebody else's presence, when they are easy." This is when she is thought-struck, but they are not home yet, and so: drive drive.
Nick
They are not home yet, and Nick knows that Pen cannot play any instruments but perhaps he imagines anyway. "You're so good at things," he says. "What instrument would you play if you could play an instrument? What is that one we picked up? How do you play it?"
Mercury
Pen likes it when Nick thinks she is good at things but she feels all queer strange funny when he says it like that and it is both a pleased queer strange funny and a retiring queer strange funny and she gives him a flick of a look side-long again but only briefly it turns into a quick full-glance she is too direct for side-long glances to be her normal measure and she knows she has an instinct to not quite look at him now and so she does and anyway the look was brief and one of her dimples is just visible and then gone and she says, "It is a hammered dulcimer; you play it with little sticks. If I could play any instrument, I would play the - uh - the, humm, I don't know if I can choose. The flute maybe. Then I'd be kissing breath into song. But maybe I'd get tired of that. The harpsichord would be cool, or the cello, or the guitar. What would you play if you could play anything?"
Nick
"Maybe the piano. It makes so many different kinds of sounds," Nick says, and he missed her look because he is staring up and out the window, at the stars that are just beginning to wink and smile down on them. "I wanted to play the drums when I was little but we didn't have the money for me to join band." A beat. "Fuck, I always drink too much whenever I'm with Andrés."
Mercury
"I harbored unfair resentment toward the piano when I was young," Pen says. "Church, and also rich kids at school, conspired to inspire it in me. I would have liked to play the drums - do you still want to learn how to play the drums? We could buy a set." Because they can buy whatever they want now: they are magick, and not in poverty, and no artificial shortages, and if he wants it she will get it for him. Here, soft laugh: ash-fall, silk-pull; "Why do you think you do?"
Nick
"Maybe," Nick says, to learning the drums. He sways a little lower against the window, is almost looking up through it now and into the sky. The skies are open out here once they have passed out of the shadow of the skyscrapers; there are few trees, and the stars are hemmed in by the mountains. "Maybe we can both learn." A beat. "I don't know why. He just puts it in front of me and then I drink it. He reminds me a little bit of being younger."
Mercury
"In what way, handsome Crow, pret-ty fellow?" Pen sounds curious; she can guess, so the question is not as intent as it might be otherwise, Pen being who she is.
Nick
"Oh, just...doing things even though I know it's a bad idea. It's weird to be the sober one when someone else is getting really drunk." Nick is beginning to sway back toward the center, back toward her. His head flops to the side so he can look up at her, now, instead of the open sky. "Where are we going to put the dulcimer?"
Mercury
"I think the living room for now," Pen says. "You would look very fetching playing the hammered dulcimer." A beat, and then, "I like the weirdness of being the sober one when someone else is getting really drunk; it is interesting to have twinned perspectives - because of course you must, if they are your friend, think of things as they see them too. I also like to be drunk on the mead of poetry etcetera and given over to abandon, but not with everyone." This might well be a difference in upbringing: Nick is a man, Pen is a woman; it is safer for him to be drunk to abandon than it is for her to be so. "Are you very smashed?" She sounds amused. "You don't regret it, do you?"
Nick
"Not very," he says. "But I had four...five tequilas and a couple of beers. I don't think I regret it, though." He is watching her profile now, his eyes steady. "I like when you get drunk on the mead of poetry," he says. "With me and Ari. It was always fun when we all used to drink together."
Mercury
"It hasn't been so long," Pen says, and yes: not only does she sound amused; she is amused. "We'll drink together again. I think you want to beat Andrés, or you like it when I come and get you," and see - she is teasing him; and here they are, home. There is violence done to the Kidds' front yard, and they both know who the perps are. Pen kills the engine; the car lights wash away; she lets her head flop back, and she looks over at Nicholas, a moment of transition - suspended - this moment: now.
Nick
"Sometimes I wonder if we're going to have to testify in court after the election," Nick says, noting the chaos in the Kidds' front yard, noting the Clinton-Kaine signs that have been lined up across the street in neat rows like battle standards. Before he opens the car door his head flops, once more, across the center console and toward her lap. "I do like it when you come pick me up," he says. "It means I get to see you a little sooner."
Mercury
"Romantic flatterer," Pen says, with this quick smile. "I feel quite wooed," and though the words are flippant, the way her fingers creep into his hair is solemn, thoughtful, sensualist-Hermetic, intent, and she strokes from brow to nape of neck, and then unbuckles her seatbelt, and now it is time to haul the dulcimer inside, to use strength and care and care of the one step with the loose brick whoops loose brick attack.
Nick
Nick is perhaps better suited to being on the bottom as they take the dulcimer up the steps; it keeps him from being attacked by the loose brick and anyway they are equally capable of hauling the thing. His hair is still in slight disarray from her fingers, a smile still lingering there around his eyes. "What were you going to show me about the dulcimer?"
Mercury
"You need to look at it," Pen says, smiling - this slow smile, almost languorous, honey-slow smile see. "Once we set it down, when I hit one of the strings; look at it with your sixth sense, tracing the movement of quintessence."
Nick
"Oh," Nick says, and tilts his head as he looks down at the dulcimer. There is a tense moment when he almost stumbles over the loose brick but, see, his foot rights itself at the last moment and then they are up and through the door with it. Into the living room.
He helps her to set it against the wall, and walks over to light one of the candles on the end table nearby, leaning down to study the dulcimer before she strikes the strings.
[Prime 1, diff 4, -1 for instrument.]
Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (1, 2, 6) ( success x 1 )
Mercury
The tense moment dredges up a gasp, wire-taut, wire-sharp; it catches in Pen's throat, and she gives Nick a wide-eyed look; and then the dulcimer is safe, and settled, and she takes its hammers out and she strikes it, and Nick can just see the glimmer of some quintessence (melodious, piercing) hang in the air, very faint, conjured up by the sound; it is gone when there are no notes playing. It does not appear every time she strikes a string with the hammer. There is no pattern; and she really does not know how to play this instrument.
Nick
There is no pattern, but Nick looks up at her from where he is leaned down near the instrument and there is a crinkle at the corners of his eyes. "I wonder what it does," he says. "If it does anything specific. Do you think someone used to use it in their magick?"
Mercury
"I don't know. Here, you play with it," Pen says, offering Nick the hammers, only to - as soon as he takes them - go flop across the couch, as if she'd been suspended by a string, see, and the string was just cut.
Nick
Nick takes the hammers from her and very carefully strikes the strings, as though concerned that he might snap them with a fall of the hammer. There is a gentle note, two, and then once reassured the next strikes are a little more firm. He, too, has no idea how to play it but seems to be taking pleasure in hearing the notes and in making them ring just so.
He leaves off after a few notes more, wandering over to the couch. He rests a hand on the armrest and looks down at Pen for only a moment before he kicks his shoes off and goes to slide down beside her, wiggling into a comfortable position.
Mercury
Nick is a cat sometimes and he must be one now to find a comfortable position beside Pen, the way she is sprawled; face-down, arms curled under her head, her cheek on her forearms, her head just-turned, one leg hanging off the couch the other stretched across it. She adjusts her position to allow for Nick, though must pull her skirt; he's sitting on it.
Nick
Nick is a cat sometimes and, catlike, he curls himself around and fits his body up against her. He lies on his side and curls an arm beneath his head so that he can look over at her, the way her head is angled. He rests a hand over the small of her back, its weight like a warm stone. After a moment it turns to kneading the muscles bunched below her shoulderblades. "Are you tired?"
Mercury
"No, though you can keep doing that, and I will love you more than the moon loves dark," Pen says, after a pleasure-filled hum, responsive, responding.
Nick
There is a moment's pause before Nick pushes himself back up into a sitting position. He sways, catches his bearings: the room still spins, however briefly. He leans over her so that he can press in with his thumbs and fingertips, can more readily wring tension out of her muscles. He is quiet for a few moments, pressing his thumb in at the base of her neck, smoothing a palm over the back of her shoulder. After a moment he makes an inquiring little hum.
Mercury
"Grace," Pen says, her eyes half-closed. "She frustrates me."
Pen is still wearing her green jacket but, in order to fully enjoy Nick's hands, she is willing to bestir herself and take it off, fling it carelessly to the floor, and see there the back of her dress dips low is not actually zipped all the way up needs another inch to be fully closed and there's the band of her bra just above where the dress would close if it were to close. It's a low-thing.
Nick
Nick shifts his weight back, sways his spine to allow her to rise in order to take her jacket off. The movement takes only a moment's hesitation; the alcohol has made him somewhat slower to react. Once Pen has settled again one of his thumbs comes to press in at the base of her neck before he makes a thoughtful noise and then unzips her dress the rest of the way down her back. His thumbprint leaves her but only so he can fiddle with the clasp of her bra. This, too, takes a bit longer than it ordinarily might but eventually comes free.
And then he resumes. It's a good thing, to be loved more than the moon loves dark. "Grace does?" She can almost imagine him slow-blinking, if she tries; she can hear it in his voice. "She was at the bar earlier, before you came. She asked if you were still mad and then she got mad at me when I told her I couldn't tell you how you were supposed to feel."
Mercury
Nick is drunk, so perhaps he is not as alert, as attuned, as astute, as he might normally be to feel the whisper of tension as her muscles go taut again, braced and bracing, and Pen having resettled continues to gaze through the veil of her long lashes at their floor or a cabinet perhaps an interesting candle stick or piece of sculpture and she says, "All right. I don't think she was mad at you. After all you didn't punch her friend when he was down, aka when he was rambling at a near-stranger whose ideology he has just shat all over and continues to shit on with every sentence, by politely asking him to leave," seeth. Sharp inhale, Pen buries her face in the pillow of her arms, and then having tamped down on the urge to fly into a passion, she says, "I just don't get it."
Nick
Nick only feels the tautness in her muscles when he moves his hands down to her shoulders to work out a knot and finds that the knot is in fact her body readying itself. His hands still, and his palms begin to smooth over her skin instead. One finds its way to cup around the back of her neck. "I don't really get it either," he says. "I think she's just really protective of him. I think she probably also doesn't see the irony in starting fights while talking about the importance of unity." A gentle squeeze of her muscles. "Are you okay?"
Mercury
"I was straight with her; I didn't backpedal or try to say it was all okay - I have an ill-taste in my mouth, that she'd even seek to have me ...apologize or admit to wrong-doing. I don't care how protective she is; I'm vey protective of my people, too, but if you stepped away from your oaths to the Chakravanti, I wouldn't expect or ask other Chakravanti to be okay with that." Pen falls silent, but only for a moment.
"I don't like how she acts about my Tradition: as if she understands anything about it. Elliot was a poor example; frankly, I'm shocked his mentor ever initiated him or that he passed any of the tests to attain rank; the only thing that shocks me more is that the Chorus would have him, faithless as he is."
Nick
Nick only shakes his head as she speaks, and does not attempt to interrupt her. "The Chorus can be very forgiving," he says. "But I don't really get it any more than you do, Pen. I don't think you've done anything you need to apologize for."
Mercury
"They do have that reputation," Pen says, coolly, of the Chorus, and she glances over her shoulder at Nick. "I would find it less frustrating if she weren't so, I don't know, I think genuinely blind -- and unhappy about it; stoically resolved? But it still pisses me off. What do you think, Nicholas?" They've already discussed Elliot at length, after the picnic; this is something else and again.
Nick
"I think sometimes a Tradition isn't a good fit and people should be permitted to leave," he says, and smooths a hand between her shoulder blades lest she think his words might carry some sting. "A lot of people are very young when they choose a Tradition. But I don't think that means you need to trust him, or think well of him or the oaths he broke."
He leans down and kisses the back of her shoulder. "I think she's not very aware of other people, in general," he says. "And I also think she doesn't handle change well and isn't very emotionally mature. Neither of us see her very often, so I'm just planning to continue that and be polite whenever I come across her."
Mercury
"Most Traditions seem to have a less rigorous initiation than the Order does," Pen says, a touch sulkily; she knows she sounds a touch sulky, she knows she is sulking, and that only compounds to tempest-brood silver-tarnished quality of her reply; she takes a deep breath; the air could taste of ozone. "But yes, sometimes one should become forsworn and seek out something else, but his reasons - it is just all so unbelievable. But leave that aside. Do you trust him? Do you trust her?"
Nick
"I don't really trust him, but I barely know him," he says. "His reasons for leaving didn't seem very solid, but I...some people just aren't very introspective. They know something's wrong but they don't know how how to describe what." He runs his fingers back through her hair, forehead to nape of her neck, gently trailing his fingertips along her scalp.
"I don't know if I trust her much, either, at the moment. She seems pretty pissed. But we...I mean, we don't see that much of her, anyway. At least, I don't."
Mercury
"Whether or not we see much of her isn't imporant to the question," Pen says, but after a pause. Nick's fingers through her hair still her, silence her for a moment, and she bows her head again when his fingers reach her nape. She'd had to shift up to look over her shoulder, but now she rests her forehead on her clasped hands.
Nick
"I don't think she'd actively try to hurt either of us," Nick says. "Or do something to cause me to distrust her." He presses his thumbs into the back of her neck at the base of her skull, kneading carefully. "So if we're not seeing her much anyway, it's just a matter of knowing what to disclose and when, or taking care how we work with her if there's some kind of large crisis."
Mercury
"You're kinder than I am," Pen says, after a spell of silence because what Nick's doing feels good and if she doesn't say anything maybe he'll keep doing it and his hands will travel and that will feel good too and her rings are cold and hard one against the other with her hand clasped like that, and when she finally does speak she sounds regretful.
Nick
He can hear that note of regret in her voice and so there is a pause, one thumb finally ceasing its rotation as the other hand moves off of her and onto the couch cushion beside her head. This is to support him as he leans down and kisses the back of her neck, the side of her ear. "You're very kind, Pen," he says. "I'm sure you were as kind to her as anyone can be to anyone who is yelling at them."
He pushes himself back up, and the kneading resumes, closer to the base of her neck. "Do you think we ought to react differently?"
Mercury
"I think it is vital that we can voice dissent and still be friendly, that we can follow a course of independent thought and study, and it - that she doesn't seem to understand that I - it is only frustrating; how do you think we are reacting now? I don't want to cut her off or to cease behaving in a friendly fashion toward her, I only ... she is so fat on rhetoric, I find it difficult. It makes me want to be brisk."
Pen rolls onto her back, slipping her arms out of her dress' sleeves, and her bra joins her jacket on the floor, carelessly tossed that-a-way; she straightens her necklace over her collar her breastbone and she lets her knees drift into Nick's side, maybe curving behind him. Two can be cats.
Nick
"I think it's also important that we can disagree with each others' friends without it turning into all out rivalry," Nick says, and there is a little sigh here. His hand trails against her side as she turns onto her back, and he leans his shoulder into the back of the couch so he can curl to the side and lean over her.
"I also find it difficult," he says, and there is a little smile here, something rue-touched. "Limiting time is what helps me stay kind."
Mercury
Pen traces the shape of Nick's smile with her index and middle fingers, smiling herself, albeit privately, distantly see, "You are also better at staying silent than I am," and listen: she sounds fond and admiring, because she would like to be secret in some ways that she is not; she knows the ways in which she is secret and they are not the ways of saying nothing, not usually; "but - " and she lofts her chin " - I think I have improved, haven't I? It's been a long time since my last duel."
Nick
"It has been a very long time since your last duel," Nick says, and his smile too is fond, is admiring, because he too would sometimes like to be things that he is not. He rests his arm along her side, brushes his thumb along her cheekbone in lieu of her back which has been turned away from him. "I don't know if this is a situation where it's better to be silent, though. Sometimes people come around after you've spoken your mind. You give them a chance to think differently."
Mercury
"Didn't you know, Nicholas Crow Mercury Hyde," Pen says, glancing down at her necklace again, the milk and honey glimmer of it, the silver drowned city glamour in it. "We don't give people a chance to think differently; we only oppress their spirits and their creativity," and Pen, see, on the tail-edge of this remark, she flicks a (beguiling [winsome]) mischief-edged glance up from under her lashes, like to see whether or not he bought it. "You're very handsome. Can you guess five things I like about you?"
Nick
"That's you, the great oppressor." Nick's eyes meet hers from under his own lashes, see, like they are sharing a secret.
This clever sharp thing melts away rapidly as her question catches him off guard, makes him laugh in this effusive way that her manner of showing affection sometimes does. He flattens his palm over her stomach, thoughtfully brushes her skin, and his smile is tinged with embarrassment: but pleased, too. "Let's see. My eyes, and my hair, and my cleverness, and that I...that I'm thoughtful with other people. That's four. You like when I tell you stories," and the mischief is back, his smile knife-quick.
Mercury
"I do like those five things about you. You get a prize," Pen says, with an ardent look, which is to say an intense one, very emotive and eloquent; and as she does not immediately ask him to tell her a story, perhaps that is what the prize is; a moment to gather his resources.
Nick
She is rewarded with another laugh, if that was one of her goals, and Nick wiggles himself up farther onto the couch, shifting his legs back into a more comfortable position. He'll be pressed in against the back and alongside her or on top of her soon enough. "What is the prize?"
Mercury
"My eyes, or a lock of my hair, or a measure of my cleverness, or a thought about other people, or a story," Penelope says, unwilling to cede a measure of the cushions, though perhaps beginning to be amused by the half-off dress, the skirt drifting up to catch M. Hyde's legs as he shifts.
Nick
Nick is not as wary of the dress as he ought to be: the alcohol is still in full effect. He cannot quite wedge himself into the small space between her and the back of the couch and so he is beginning to end up somewhere in between, leaned over top of her and against the back of it, his legs well tangled. "Hm. What if I want all of them?" He leans his head against the couch cushion, his eyes hooded, amusement pulling at the corner of his mouth. "What does a measure of your cleverness look like today?"
Mercury
"Is that the one you're choosing, Crow?" Pen is restrained, see? Restrained laughter; his drunk tanglement does indeed amuse her; we have moved past beginning to be to full-on inhabiting amusement.
Nick
"Maybe. I'd like to know what it is before I choose it." He wiggles a foot; it does not quite free his foot from the grasp of her skirt.
Mercury
"Perhaps once you have it, you'll be clever enough to know what it is." Her dimples are in evidence, although Nick's foot wiggle has her warily watching the voluminous twist of pink fabric, 'lest there be a tear.
Nick
Nick gives up the moment his foot encounters real resistance, so there is no risk of tear; instead he settles his weight more fully against her, giving up on his legs for the time being. He is not still for long though, and begins to pluck at the buttons on his shirt. "I'll take a measure of your cleverness, then, since you have a lot to spare."
Mercury
"Mmmmm. Very well. You know if it were a measure of cleverness at the bottom of the cleverness pile, then all the other measures would be disturbed, and that is why you should always say first or last top or bottom when giving away apples and bottles and things that are packed away carefully," Pen says, and perhaps in a past life (perhaps a past life they both shared, together; they've spoken of those in passing, haven't they? Touched on them, though touched on Nick's more in general; he's so much closer to it, so much more strongly affected by) she bargained with fairies like this. She was a more deliberate beguiler and trickster. When her skirt is no longer in danger, she watches Nick's fingers work at his buttons instead, then decides to help. Through the loop again again.
Nick
"Ah. So should I have specified and asked for you to give me the first bit of cleverness you had to offer, or the last?" And, his shirt freed, he squirms his way out of it, somehow tangling his legs further in the fabric as he twists around to extricate his arms. The bit of purple cloth flutters away to the ground, and this was all so that Nick can settle himself again.
Mercury
[Doo-de-doo Wits Enigmas.]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 5, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Mercury
"Mmhmm." Pen's ribs are a casualty of Nick squirming, and then her legs are a casualty of how tangled he is; when she tries to shift, she finds that her legs have become tightly bound; she wriggles too, directing Nick to no, ack, no roll that, and her voice gets tight, roll that way, and lower, and okay now, and, freedom! or maybe she should shimmy the dress the rest of the way off her hips and kick it to freedom; she likes lounging around in little but jewelry. She begins to do that, but then stops looping an arm around Nick's shoulder so that she can take off one of her rings: thumb ring, set with blue. Then, letting her shoulders hit the couch again, she reaches for Nick's hand and tries the thumb ring on his thumb and then his index finger and then and so on until she finds a finger it fits.
Nick
Nick shifts and moves where she directs him, albeit clumsily, and at last she is free and his legs are no longer atangle either. He offers her a hand for her ring, and it fits snugly around not his index finger but his middle finger when she tries that one. He raises his hand and holds it in front of his face with his fingers splayed so that she can admire it there alongside his wedding band.
Were Nick less drunk he might be aware that this is the bit of cleverness that she meant to offer, that he has used it up: but he is drunk. "So what is your last bit of cleverness, then?"
Mercury
"To be used only in case of emergencies, in that dark crack before dawn, after Ragnarok," Pen says, and she kisses the back of Nick's hand; peers at him through his own fingers; then pulls his hand down so she can kiss him instead. And Pen does not take pity on people because they are drunk when it comes to being clever, though because she is in love with Nicholas, besotted and so on and so forth, she does tell him a riddle. It's a difficult riddle, but not impossible. And after she tells him the riddle, she says, "That is a password key, and it is hidden inside its answer."
Nick
Nick makes a thoughtful noise as she tells him the purpose of the last bits, his eyes wandering away from her and perhaps he wonders what this sort of knowledge would be. They are drawn back when she kisses his hand, and then she kisses him instead. He is closer to her after that, his head resting against her shoulder, and full of the sort of wisdom he himself would save for the dark crack before dawn, for after Ragnarok.
He raises his head only to blink at her when she tells him one riddle and then gives him another. "Hidden inside its answer? So...what..." She could almost see the words turning over in his mind, were she to look.
Mercury
"What indeed," Pen says, and she sounds very pleased with herself, or pleased with Nicholas, very pleased anyway, and she'll be more pleased with him soon. "Now I want something from you. Something good. Something someone with a measure of my cleverness, his own cleverness, eyes like the heath in autumn or the sea at storm, hair like the night always wanted, a thoughtful heart and a storytellng tongue might give."
Nick
"Hm." Nick places a kiss on her bare shoulder, wedges his arm in between her and the couch so that he can rest his head in a palm and regard her more easily. "A crow told me that a coyote told him that he fell in love with a star once. There was a light, a great bonfire or something more ethereal depending on who you ask, that was supposed to guide the dead back to a great house in which their bodies were kept so they'd be resurrected. He gave that light away to the star and that's why the dead wander." A beat. "But both of them lie so I have no idea whether it's true."
Mercury
"That is good," Pen says, "Ari would like it. I like that the star's light unmade the map, instead of making the map like usual," and they are both clever people, Nicholas Hyde and Elaine Siddal, and they can wile away a Sunday evening with nothing planned but time spent in one another's company, and what they talk about and what they do is theirs and theirs alone, and you'd need to bargain very well with the house's shadow to learn so much as who fell off the couch first or whose was the first sip, and the house's shadow does not bargain.
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